OutKast is one of the headliners at this year’s Firefly Music Festival. Getty Images

After years of being spotted by surprised fans during his annual vacations in Rehoboth Beach, Dave Grohl will finally perform in Delaware this summer on the state’s biggest stage.

His rock band, 11-time Grammy winner Foo Fighters, will headline Firefly Music Festival in Dover on the first weekend of the summer alongside the reunited hip-hop duo OutKast and chilled-out folk rocker Jack Johnson.

Other than a Feb. 1 concert in New York tied to the Super Bowl, the Firefly date is the only other Foo Fighters concert currently scheduled.

The festival, which runs June 19-22, announced its 100-plus act line-up for the third incarnation of Firefly on Tuesday morning, making it the largest music festival ever held in Delaware.

Also on this year’s bill: British indie rockers Arctic Monkeys, electronic dance music DJ Pretty Lights and folk rock band The Lumineers, which canceled its appearance at last year’s Firefly with little warning due to a band member’s illness.

The rootsy five-piece, nominated for a pair of awards at the Grammys later this month, promised at the time to be back in Dover “as soon as humanly possible,” and will make good on that promise this year.

This year’s festival remains rock-heavy with Weezer, Band of Horses, Cage the Elephant, Portugal. The ManCQ, Iron & Wine, Young the Giant, Tegan and Sara and Jake Bugg all announced as acts.

“Expectations are supposed to be greater because every year the festival gets bigger,” says Matt Van Belle, 29, of Wilmington, who has attended all of the Firefly festivals. “It looks like the headliners take them to that next level, for sure.”

Two of Delaware’s most popular acts – the pop-flavored Mean Lady from Newark and Wilmington roots act New Sweden – will also perform, making it the first time in the festival’s three-year history to have more than one Delaware band.

Four-day general admission passes, which cost $249, will go on sale Monday at noon at www.fireflyfestival.com. Four-day VIP passes ($699) and four-day Super VIP passes ($1,999) are on sale now.

The Super VIP tickets include access to the artist lounge where musicians gather before and after their sets, stage deck viewing for some main stage shows and golf cart transportation between stages.

If you don’t have a golf cart, you better wear comfortable shoes to the festival, which is graduating from three to four days this year.

The festival area, known as The Woodlands, will cover 154 acres this year – a jump from the 87 acres Firefly used in 2012, its first year.

The extra space and additional day will allow the festival, which drew 65,000 people last year, to possibly host up to 85,000 people this summer, which would land Firefly alongside America’s largest rock festivals like the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee and Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California.

It also means more music. Firefly featured 48 bands on four stages in 2012 and 73 acts on six stages last year. About 105 acts have been announced to perform across seven stages this summer.

“This line-up continues to show the commitment that [organizers] have to making this the best music festival on the East Coast,” says Mike Tatoian, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Dover Motorsports Inc., which leases the festival site to Chicago-based Red Frog Events.

This year’s Firefly will mark the return of a few bands that have played the festival before, like alternative rockers Grouplove and mash-up artist Girl Talk.

But the returning act with the most buzz is Las Vegas rockers Imagine Dragons, which performed an 11:45 a.m. set at the very first Firefly festival, before its debut album was even released. The band has since skyrocketed in popularity, and is nominated for a pair of Grammys this year.

One thing is certain: The days of Imagine Dragons playing to a sparse crowd of yawning and hungover music fans is over. The band is sure to get a prime performance slot this year.

Van Belle was one of the fans who woke up early in 2012 to see Imagine Dragons, a band he had never heard of at the time. For him, that’s another Firefly draw – seeing unknown bands just before they break.

“They blew us away and now they are international superstars,” says Van Belle, whose friends took pictures with the band after the performance. “That kind of stuff is legendary.”

Fresh from performing at last year’s Philadelphia Folk Festival, the six-piece Americana act New Sweden is gearing up to play its biggest festival yet after more than a month of keeping its Firefly selection secret until this morning’s announcement.

Last year, the band pushed for its inclusion and never got the call, making this year even sweeter, says James “Jimmy Dukes” Dukenfield, a vocalist and banjo player in the band.

“Everyone’s really excited about it. I don’t know why you wouldn’t be,” says Dukenfield, 32, of Wilmington. “You’d have to be a real Scrooge to find the downside.”

For Foo Fighters frontman Grohl, set to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April as a member of Nirvana, the summertime trip to Delaware will be nothing new.

Each summer, the Washington, D.C., native and his family fly into Georgetown’s Sussex County Airport and stay in the Rehoboth and Dewey Beach area for two weeks.

Those fans who bumped into Grohl, Delaware’s own rock ‘n’ roll Bigfoot of sorts, have taken photos with him everywhere from Funland on Rehoboth’s Boardwalk to Rehoboth Avenue’s Bandstand.

And while he once stopped on the sidewalk in front of Irish Eyes in Rehoboth Beach to watch Lower Case Blues play – flashing them the sign of the horns in approval while sticking out his tongue – Grohl himself has not yet performed in Delaware.

-Ryan Cormier, The News Journal

FULL LINEUP

• A Great Big World

• Amos Lee

• A-Trak

• Aer

• Airborne Toxic Event

• American Authors

• Andrew Belle

• Arctic Monkeys

• Asaf Avidan

• Band Of Horses

• Basic Vacation

• Bleachers

• Breach The Summit

• Bronze Radio Return

• Cage The Elephant

• Cash Cash

• Chance The Rapper

• Cherub

• Childish Gambino

• Christian Porter

• City And Colour

• Courrier

• Courtney Barnett

• Cruiser

• Dan Croll

• Foo Fighters

• G-Eazy

• Gemini Club

• Geographer

• Girl Talk

• Goldroom

• Gregory Alan Isakov

• Griswolds

• Grouplove

• Haerts

• Hey Rosetta!

• High Highs

• Holychild

• Hunter Hunted

• Imagine Dragons

• Iron & Wine

• Jack Johnson

• Jake Bugg

• John & Jacob

• Johnnyswim

• Kaiser Chiefs

• Kodaline

• Kongos

• Little Comets

• Little Daylight

• Local Natives

• Lucius

• Magic Man

• Martin Garrix

• Mean Lady

• Misterwives

• Ms Mr

• New Politics

• New Sweden

• Nonono

• Outkast

• Phantogram

• Phosphorescent

• Pigpen Theatre Co

• Portugal. The Man

• Pretty Lights

• Rac

• Royal Teeth

• Saints Of Valory

• Salva

• San Fermin

• Shakey Graves

• Sir Sly

• Sky Ferreira

• Sleeper Agent

• Sleigh Bells

• Smallpools

• Son Lux

• Step Rockets

• Stop Light

Observations

• Tegan And Sara

• The Ceremonies

• The Colourist

• The Lumineers

• The Mowglis

• The Weeks

• The White Panda

• The Wild Feathers

• Third Eye Blind

• Tune Yards

• Twenty One Pilots

• Typhoon

• Unlikely Candidates

• Vance Joy

• Vic Mensa

• Walk Off The Earth

• Washed Out

• Weezer

• White Denim

• Wild Child

• Wild Cub

• X Ambassadors

• Young The Giant

• Ziggy Marley

Contact Ryan Cormier at (302) 324-2863 or rcormier@delawareonline.com. Follow him on Twitter @ryancormier or subscribe at www.facebook.com/ryancormier.